Gulf Island Building.

I see now. That is a monster beam in between the living room and kitchen with a ton of lags. Did you have any construction background before you started building your house? You mentioned that you couldn't use drywall cause it has to be transported in pairs? I have many times ripped the strip of paper that holds the two sheets together off at the lumber yard and moved them individually. Just a thought. Keep up the good work!

Gulf Island Building.

Yes, I've had a little.
Did my first residential building in 1967, and my first industrial construction in 1969 when I moved to Whitehorse.
I've had my ticket since the '70's.
It has been my good fortune to work on a wide variety of buildings in the Yukon and throughout British Columbia and Alberta.
Everything from building a set of cabinets up to a damsite, and everything in between. It's been a fun ride.
Can't do the heavy stuff anymore though.
And as for ripping off the paper from the pairs, we most definitely thought about that. But we have to load the drywall at the store, move it by van down to the marina, unload it from the van onto the boat, motor it across the channel (4 miles), unload it from the boat and then lug it up the bank and into the house. That last bit is 30 steps going up. As you and I both know, sliding sheets of drywall over one another has a nasty habit of ripping the surface paper off and rolling it up into little pieces.
We are not permitted to have a dock here, so the boat is anchored out in the bay. All in all it boiled down to being essentially impossible.
And when I say we, I really mean I. There is no other help here, and my wife has never been physically able to help with anything heavy. She's quite happy to stain and varnish, or work in her garden.
There are a couple of places here that have been drywalled.
They are on the other side of the island where there is one good access spot to unload. Plus there are a couple of trailers and ATV's available to move materials on that side. Here, we are on a spit which is strictly accessible only on foot.
And besides, those guys over there always make sure they get lots of help!
Can't say I blame them.

Gulf Island Building.

There will be something like 300 of the short cedar boards going on to the valence. This is the first batch of 50 or so, couldn't wait to see what they were going to look like. I think it might be better when the whole thing is done.

Gulf Island Building.

In between bouts of painting and varnishing I managed to get a bit done on the curved island. Here's what it looked like as I started. Now, remember that I already had all the curved pieces pre-cut, so this goes quite fast.
Here is the base I had to start with.

Gulf Island Building.

What you see above are the curved pieces which make the base of the island, and they are made from a couple of layers of plywood, with spacers semi-evenly spaced. The thin plywood covering the front is 1/4" mahogany. Well, Philippine mahogany, which is really Luaun and not a mahogany at all. I wonder why we call it that? I glued and gunned that on.
This one is a bit more of the base progressing.

Gulf Island Building.

The preceding shot shows where the countertop stove and the sink will be going. This simple guide let me place the cabinet dividers appropriately.
One of the problems of doing a curved unit, and there are a few, is that the curve must be made wider than a standard counter, which typically does not exceed 24". The curve reduces the usable space for the stovetop or sink as measured in a straight line. You apparently waste those few inches which are used up by the curve.
In order to overcome this glitch, I started with a base which is 24" to begin with. As soon as you start to build up the cabinets proper, you will see that the bottom boards are more like 30" across. This will give me sufficient room to fit the units in place.
Here some of the dividers are in place and cross-braced while the top curved backing pieces are glued and nailed in place.

Gulf Island Building.

Good thing I have a few clamps at my disposal......
You will note that the partitions are not all square with the curve of the cabinet.
I will be mounting drawers where possible, so the partitions are put in with parallel pairs to facilitate the mounting thereof.
I will use the full extension slides, which reminds me, I haven't got them ordered yet.
Don't get old boys and girls. The memory keeps forgetting things.
I have clamped 4 pieces of the vertical cedar which will be used to cover the front of the cabinet. Just as a test fit.
When I did this, I saw that I had managed to cut the dado on the top of the boards about 3/32" too long.
Quite a lot of the boards were left over from a section of the solarium I had to cover in this fashion, and we had used the diamond Varathane on the boards.
Wife decided that these were to be varnished, so she tried a coat over the Varathane. Didn't work.
So what I had to do was to run the whole lot (150+-) through the planer just enough to clean off the finish, something like 1/64".
In order to make sure all the boards were exactly the same thickness first, I decided to skim a hair off the back side as well. So, another 1/64" came off
there too. Problem solved, now I am waiting for the varnishing to get done.

Gulf Island Building.

In the meantime, this planing of the boards had resulted in the dadoes becoming just too shallow. So now I will have to run the whole lot - both ends - through the tablesaw again.
Here I have cut a part of the dado to the thickness required. It didn't take much, but as the boards themselves will carry a portion of the countertop load, I thought it best that there be enough of a "seat" to do the job. The cedar boards will be glued and gunned in place.

Gulf Island Building.

Looks like it will be a few days before there is any real change to show you in the kitchen. When you are on a small island, and when you are trying to make an effort at self-sufficiency, you need to do a few basic things.
First, you need a woodshed, or two.
The first one I put up was made from slabs that were chainsawed off the side of logs. Before I had the sawmill, I made an "Alaska mill" using a big old Husky chainsaw. After cutting loads of boards, the old saw finally bit the dust. It got replaced with a Husky 394. Great machine and still going strong, although it is no longer used with an alaska mill.

Gulf Island Building.

Just a few feet away from there is my Japanese potting shed.
I built this little guy last summer to use with my Japanese garden. Right after I put it up, I found out how to build the roof properly, Japanese style that is. Oh well, live and learn.
I have the door made for it, just not hung yet. And it still needs some benches inside to make it useful.

Gulf Island Building.

Funny, I am 'over the water' here in Ladysmith, but now know from your photos, exactly where you are. Do you know the Mottishaw cabin, proly NW of you along the channel? Wow, what an incredible undertaking to construct....will watch frequently. Cheers
Syd